The early bird gets the worm! Nice to see a lot of adventurous folks for the morning tour after all the festivities of the Fourth of July last night. We practiced our observation skills at the floating bait dock, where hundreds of thousands of forage fish are kept such as the anchovies for the fishing boats that go out and want live fish for catching tuna. We saw California sea lions resting on the yellow mooring ball and at the end of the bait dock along with a dozen or so egrets, including the Great Egret and Snowy Egret, some pelicans, cormorants, gulls and a Great Blue Heron. Sunny skies and calm seas were had as we went west through the Mission Bay Channel. We saw many hundreds of terns plunge diving into the sea and capturing small fish. Captain Austin found us a Minke Whale that proved to be elusive after the whale surfaced three times close to our vessel. Soon after, we found a pod of 200 Long-beaked common dolphins that were porpoising and moving quickly to the north. We had cow-calf pairs, mothers with younger, smaller babies leaping beside our boat. Some of us spotted a large Mola mola or ocean sunfish, but we wanted to keep up with the inquisitive dolphins that took time to play with our boat, surfing our wake and riding the pressure wave on our bow. Off of LaJolla Point, we spotted another pod of common dolphins, this time over 400 Short-beaked common dolphins. They were making some high leaps and showed us grace, majesty and a bit of mysterious magic. They are social like humans and have a wide range of fascinating behaviors.
On our afternoon excursion, we made our way straight out to the west to see what mother ocean had in store for us! We found large abundances of seabirds including elegant terns, California brown pelicans, sooty shearwaters, black vented shearwaters, and much more as we made our way offshore. We eventually turned more to the NW, venturing up near the La Jolla canyon to see what wildlife we could find. We stumbled upon a VERY spunky group of offshore bottlenose dolphins! They raced right up to us, changing direction to come ride our wake. We also spotted the tiniest baby with its mother! We think most of the pod was sticking close to the mom-calf pair for that reason- it looked freshly born! All too soon we began to make our way back south to Mission Bay, having the sweet dolphins as escorts for a bit before they split off from us.
We have been fortunate to have absolutely gorgeous conditions out there on the water, come hang on our sunset trip this evening!
Naturalists, Greg & Olivia
Everything came together at the end of the night for ONE EPIC TRIP! We found a whale and dolphins IMMEDIATELY! Within two miles of shore we encountered a humpback whale and around 150 common dolphins all FEASTING together. We spent a whole two hours hanging out with these dolphins and the whale while they feasted on so many different kinds of fish! We have baitfish everywhere right now – almost like San Diego is trying to mimic Monterey vibes. By way of reviewing photos of the birds and their catch, we saw sardines, Spanish mackerel and even a needlefish in a Terns mouth! WE cruised with the dolphins as the hunted and played in our wake.
The humpback whale breached once – far from our boat. But a few people were lucky enough to see it from a far. There was some surface lunge feeding going on at one point too. The sunset came through with a SOLID burn.
The ocean is never the same and that what makes these nights so special.
Sometimes, you luck into a night you’ll have burned into your memories for a life time.
We’d love to see ya out here soon!
Naturalist, Alison
